Love, Wise Girl
by Burst.ofSILENCE
Summary: When Annabeth and Percy first became friends, they became pen pals and sent each other a bunch of letters during the school year. Years later, and they never stopped. Oneshot, Percy/Annabeth


**Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians**

* * *

**Love, Wise Girl**

It started with a postcard.

"Percy, honey, you have mail."

Percy looked up, not entirely sure if he'd heard his mom correctly. He never got mail that wasn't the school telling his mom he'd flunked or blown something up again. He wasn't exactly the most popular kid around, and the few friends he did manage to keep (A.K.A. Grover) weren't the type to send letters.

But his mom was looking expectantly at him from the kitchen counter, holding something out towards him. He took the mail from his mom.

It was a postcard with the picture of a great white shark in an aquarium. Percy flipped the postcard over, and his dyslexia stopped acting up enough for him to decipher the name of the sender: Annabeth Chase. On the other side, she wrote: _What's up, Seaweed Brain?_

It was four words, but they made Percy really happy. After he'd come back from Camp Half-Blood, he didn't think he would be able to talk to his new friend until next summer.

Without waiting another minute, he headed to his room, scavenged his backpack for a blank sheet of paper, and wrote out a reply, talking about what he'd done since leaving Camp. It was embarrassing to ask his mom to teach him how to send mail, especially when she had that knowing smile on; but a few hours after he got the postcard, his reply was on its way. A week later, Annabeth's letter came in the mail, telling him about all the places her dad had taken her.

He never expected to get a pen pal out of discovering he was a demigod. It was a bit archaic to be writing letters when they could just call each other, and it was definitely taxing for a pair of kids with dyslexia; but e-mails and long-distance phone calls were expensive and dangerous, and they didn't have enough drachmas to waste on Iris Messages that weren't emergencies.

Two months after her first mail, Annabeth sent him a picture of herself smirking proudly as she stood on the steps of the Capitol Building. On the back, her sharp print read: _You better not be having adventures without me!_

On a whim, he sent her his own picture back. It was a candid snapshot his mother had taken a few months before, with him glumly sprawled over his summer homework as he napped. He flipped the photo over and scrawled: _What do you think?_

He kept her photo in the back of his notebook for the rest of the year. On really slow, unbearably boring classes, he would stare at it and remind himself of all the adventures they'd had.

* * *

Her letters stopped coming after a while.

Percy got antsy when her letter didn't arrive on schedule one Saturday. Annabeth was pretty punctual with these things, so her letter not coming meant she was either mad at him or something had happened to her.

When he got mail three days later, he spotted her handwriting on the envelope, and his chest nearly caved in in relief. In her letter, she'd mentioned that she'd returned to Camp Half-Blood, and that's why she couldn't send a reply sooner. Percy knew he should be worried about whatever it was that managed to chase her out of her dad's household; but frankly, he was just glad Annabeth was alive and safe.

There were still times after that when her letter would come late. Percy reasoned that she was probably travelling or his letter got mixed up with the mail for another cabin again, but those reasons didn't really stop him from worrying. It was only when her reply was in his hand that he could finally breathe easily.

* * *

_HOLY CRAP, ANNABETH. YOU DID NOT JUST GET ME NEW WHEELS. YOU ARE AMAZING._

* * *

_Happy New Year, Seaweed Brain!_

_So what if I did? Your old ones were wearing out anyway, and I know for a fact that your mom got you a new deck, so why not give you a new skateboard altogether, right?_

_Thanks for your gift as well! __Actually, thanks for everything, but mostly for not giving up on me when everyone else thought I was dead a few days ago. You're the best friend I could ever ask for._

_See you in the summer!_

_From,_  
_Annabeth_

* * *

After the Labyrinth, correspondence between them became sparse and awkward.

On her part, Annabeth was constantly on edge, waiting for Percy to bring up the kiss under Mount Saint Helens. She wasn't yet sure how to deal with that particular can of worms, especially not after their falling out at the end of the summer.

But he didn't, and whenever she read one of his letters and saw no evidence that they'd ever locked lips, she was always hit with a confusing mix of relief and disappointment, which irritated her more than the him skirting the issue.

And then Rachel Elizabeth Dare started popping up in his letters.

He'd started spending more time with Rachel, apparently, since the two of them went to the same school now. He was even hanging out with her and her friends some weekends.

Annabeth knew it was petty, but she made it a point to reply to his letters late whenever Rachel's name came up. He could talk about another girl who was obviously crushing really hard on him, yet he couldn't even ask his best friend about the kiss they's shared? Not cool.

She ended up not telling him about Luke visiting her. She wanted to, of course. More than her wanting to share her feelings of guilt for the boy she couldn't save, she knew Luke always made Percy's hackles rise, and there was a vindictive (she refused to use the word jealous) side of her that wanted to make him angry. But it was precisely because of this that she didn't go through with it. She still needed to figure out how to save both Percy _and_ Luke, after all; getting Percy pissed off would be counterproductive.

With a mountain of things left unsaid between them, their letters got tenser and tenser, until they stopped altogether in March.

* * *

_Hey boyfriend,_

_I don't even know if you're going to see this letter before the weekend. I don't need to be able to open your locker to know that it's probably as messy as your cabin at Camp._

_Anyway, thanks for the flowers. Though, I'm more amazed you managed to charm Mrs. Ortiz into passing them on. She normally hates it when the boyfriends of the girls in the dorm come by or drop __stuff off. What on Earth did you say to her? You are a force to be reckoned with, Percy Jackson._

_See you on Friday._

_Love,_  
_Wise Girl_

Sally was perplexed when Percy came home from school that day with a wide, dopey grin on his face. When he plopped down on the couch and hugged one of the pillows, futilely hiding his grin against it like a lovesick fool, she decided to just leave him be.

* * *

Once everything died down after the Giant War, Percy found a stack of letters addressed to him.

It was one of those nights where he couldn't sleep, his mind plagued with the events of the past few weeks. He'd been so restless that he'd actually resorted to cleaning his cabin.

When he was opening the drawers beneath his bunk to make sure he hadn't accidentally stuffed some year-old pizza in there, he came across the stack of envelopes, all addressed to him in Annabeth's handwriting and dated with various dates, spanning the time Hera had put him to sleep. Curiously, he opened up the earliest one – December 27, just a few days after he was kidnapped. He read it, and practically jumped for the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Some letters were pages long, detailing the progress on building the Argo II and whatever else was going on in Camp. Others were all about her wondering where he was and telling him how much everyone missed him. He read each one; some of them made him cry, and some of them made him chuckle through his tears.

In her eighth letter, marked February 13, the first _I love you_ appeared_. _By the time he finished reading all eighteen letters, the sun was up, and he felt like he'd gone through a roller coaster ten times.

The conch horn blew, startling Percy. Hurriedly, he scrambled to his feet and rifled through all of his clothes, pawing at all the pockets and turning them inside out. It had to be here somewhere…

* * *

When Annabeth opened the door to Cabin Three, she wasn't expecting the inside to look like a tornado had hit. Clothes were strewn about even more haphazardly than usual, some of the drawers were left open, and random pieces of paper were everywhere.

Percy was sitting on the edge of his bunk bed, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Her boyfriend looked like he didn't get any sleep. She frowned.

"Did you have a nightmare?" She asked him as she approached.

Wordlessly, he shook his head, before turning to the pile of papers sprawled over his bed. Annabeth followed his gaze, and once she spotted the dates written in her handwriting on the envelopes, she understood.

"Oh."

She'd forgotten about those. She hadn't wanted to keep them in her cabin where anyone could find them, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to burn them or throw them away, either.

"I read them all." He said, "Last night, I read them."

"Oh?" She said again. Really, what else could she say? Some of those letters were written when she was at her lowest points, too tired and unable to keep the strong front she'd shown everyone else. While she knew that Percy would never judge her for what she'd written in those letters, she wasn't proud of how needy she'd sounded.

Instead of saying anything else, he handed her a crumpled, folded envelope. Perplexed, she took it from him. The only thing written on the envelope was her first name. She opened it and took out a sheet of paper with Percy's messy scrawl on it. It was a letter, much like all the other ones she got from him in the last few years. But as she read further, she came across lines like: '_who are you to me? You must be really important if you're the only one I can remember'_ and '_did you kiss me a lot? Feels like you did' _and '_I wish I remembered you more. I miss you.' _Annabeth could feel her throat closing up.

He'd written to her, back when he hadn't known anything about her apart from her name.

She hadn't realized she was crying until Percy's thumb wiped a couple of tears gathered at the corner of her eye. When she read '_Love, SB'_ at the bottom, read him ending the letter just like he always had ever since they became a couple, she launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing a kiss against his heart as she relived those months without him.

Percy held tightly onto her as his own body shook with emotions. He kept mumbling thickly into her hair, saying "I'm sorry" and "we're here now, we're okay" and "I love you," over and over again.

This boy was going to be the end of her, she just knew it.

* * *

Their house in New Rome was filled with post-its and notes to each other. Annabeth was busy with both college and helping Jason design and build temples, and Percy was always helping out with training the legion, so on most days, the notes were their only interaction outside of sleeping in their bedroom.

There'd be notes stuck everywhere, with anything under the sun written on them: on the bathroom mirror ('_Meeting with Reyna after class to discuss the Greco-Roman exchange, don't wait up for me!')_, against the fridge if there was space left _('We're almost out of hot chocolate, be sure to buy some when you do the grocery shopping this week.')_, tacked onto the door _('Dinner's in the microwave, just reheat it. There's some coffee in the pot. Don't overwork yourself, okay?')_, and just about any surface they could get their hands on, each with a '_love you' _tacked on at the end, whether explicitly or not.

Piper visited once and, upon seeing the sheer amount of paper they go through, told Annabeth to just buy a whiteboard ("Don't get me wrong. I think the notes are really cute, but you guys go through trees like Leo goes through hot sauce").

Thing is, Annabeth _liked_ getting the notes. They reminded her of where the two of them started; in fact, she still had his reply to the first postcard she sent all those years ago. She had every single one of his letters and notes stashed away in a shoebox in the closet. And whenever she opened one of her books and found one of his surprise '_I love you!' _notes stuffed inbetween the pages, even if they were just written hastily on the back of old receipts, she kept them, even though she already had dozens like it. The letters were _them, _their life in ink.

Still, Annabeth made sure that, from now on, their tiny notes were written on recycled paper, if only to stop Piper from breathing down her neck, or worse: getting Rachel to join in her cause.

* * *

_Annabeth Chase  
__and  
__Perseus Jackson_

_request the honor of your presence_  
_in the celebration of their marriage._

_On the 14th of July, 20xx,_

_At Camp Half-Blood,_  
_Half-Blood Hill, Farm Road 3.141, _  
_Long Island, NY 11954_

_RSVP via Iris Message to Piper McLean or Rachel Elizabeth Dare_

* * *

On the night of his 25th birthday, Annabeth personally handed him a long, plain white envelope. When he opened it, he found two things: a piece of cardstock, and a—

A pregnancy test.

Percy's heart rate doubled. He'd forgotten which result meant what, but if Annabeth was giving him a stick she'd peed on as a birthday present, it _had_ to mean what he thought. Hurriedly, he picked up the card, and the three words printed there caused a slew of emotions – hope and joy and a little bit of fear and a whole lot of love – to burst from his chest.

_Congrats, Papa Jackson._

Percy didn't even bother denying that he cried.

* * *

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